STEFAN RINCK
MARFA INVITATIONAL
May 5 – 8, 2022
For the 2022 Marfa Invitational, Nino Mier Gallery presents sculptures and drawings by Stefan Rinck. The artist’s distinctively patterned and painstakingly constructed motley crew of stone characters hail from a fantastic dreamworld. Masked totems, well-dressed dogs, smiling alligators, twisted gargoyles and other creatures culled from contemporary culture and historical canons are birthed through Rinck’s chisel.
Having studied German literature, art history, and philosophy, Rinck pulls from new and ancient archetypes and myths to inform his relationship to the iconic. His figures capture our impulse to anthropomorphize ideas or objects, imbuing it with cheeky humor. Pythagoras, for instance, is a quarzite and atlantis rock triangle, fit with two eyes, legs, and a toothy mouth. The triangle becomes tantamount to the ancient Ionian philosopher who first theorized the geometry of right triangles—and is subsequently rendered ridiculous through Rinck’s irreverent, cartoonish figuration. The artist has a particular affinity for visual puns, such as a figure with an envelope for a head in Letterman, or a green quarzite and atlantis sculpture of a tubular form on four legs called Veggie Sausage.
Rinck’s off-kilter drawings and sculptures befit the eccentric atmosphere in Marfa. His deployment of ancient rocks such as marble, diabase, and sandstone also complement the West Texan landscape dominated by the organic materials of our Earth.
Stefan Rinck (b.1973, Homburg/Saar; lives and works in Berlin) studied Art History and Philosophy at the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken and Sculpture at the Academy of Arts in Karlsruhe. He has had several gallery and museum exhibitions, including Museum de Hallen, Harlem (NL), Sorry We’re Closed, Brussels (BE), Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles (US), Vilma Gold, London (GB), Semiose, Paris (FR), Gallery Rüdiger Schöttle, Munich (DE), The Breeder, Athens (GR), Galeria Alegria, Madrid/Barcelona (ES) and Cruise&Callas, Berlin (DE). He participated at the Busan Biennale in South Korea and at the Vent des Fôret and La Forêt d’Art Contemporain in France where he realized permanent public sculptures. In 2018, the work The Mangooses of Beauvais was permanently installed in the city of Paris at 53-57 rue de Grennelle (Beaupassage). He is included in public collections such as CBK Rotterdam (NL), Musée de la Loterie (BE), Sammlung Krohne (DE), FRAC Corse (FR), among others. In 2019, Stefan Rinck was featured in the Thames & Hudson publication 100 Sculptors of Tomorrow. The documentary Heart of Stone by Sonja Baeger was premiered in 2021 in Berlin and represents the production process of Rinck’s three monumental sculptures.